In the autumn of 1888, London women lived under the shadow of the Ripper murders-killings perhaps unmatched in their sadistic brutality.

Sickert & The Ripper Crimes derives from the unsuspected testimony of the woman who had particular reason to fear for her life.

Florence Pash, friend and colleague of the artist Walter Sickert and herself an artist, confided to the author’s mother when in her late eighties, a terrible story that she had kept even from those closest to her.

‘timely and welcome…remains a curious and important book’
– Paul Begg in Ripperologist, April 2002

*Ripperologist, The Journal of Jack The Ripper, East End and Victorian Studies is available in electronic format, on subscription / Email contact@ripperologist.biz

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JEAN OVERTON FULLER
OBITUARY

The author, biographer and Theosophist Jean Overton Fuller was born on 7th March 1915, of Captain John Henry Fuller and the artist Violet Overton Fuller. The posthumous child of her father, who was killed in East Africa in the winter of 1914, her mother brought the young Jean up, with an entourage of intellectuals and artists.

Jean Overton Fuller is known in the field of Ripperology for her book Sickert and the Ripper Crimes. A study of the enormously talented Edwardian painter Walter Richard Sickert, in which, using her artist eye she scrutinises the paintings he produced for clues about the 1888 Ripper murders. Sickert found thrill and inspiration in the music halls, and the murky regions of the demi-monde and its inhabitants. The man was an enigma, his obsession with the Ripper murders, and the atmosphere of impending gory death, with the nudity, garishness, the strong scarlet hues, and the threatening shadows depicted so disturbingly in The Camden Town Murder series of his paintings, have raised questions and suspicion about the nature of Sickert’s fascination.

Jean, through her mother, was a contemporary link to these events, and with Sickert and the Ripper Crimes had generated a considerable amount of interest from the public as well from among her fellow writers, such as for instance the American best-selling author Patricia Cornwell and her contribution to the subject with her Portrait of A Killer: Jack The Ripper, Case Closed.

Paul Begg and Adam Wood of Ripperologist had invited Jean Overton Fuller to speak at the 2003 Ripper Conference in Liverpool. Mogg drove from Oxford to Wymington, a small locality in Northamptonshire to collect Jean en route to the Conference. This weekend in August was one of the hottest in the year. After the nightmare journey of the A5 to Liverpool with cars slowly moving head to tail, they were rewarded and arrived at the gigantic and labyrinthine Britannia Adelphi Hotel, a venue specially chosen for this Conference because of its Ripper connection. Jean greatly enjoyed this event and the very good and erudite company of the international fraternity of Ripperologists. The late Jeremy Beadle was the Master of Ceremony and introduced Jean to the audience, and she came alight on stage and spoke entertainingly for about half an hour without notes.

This was Jean’s penultimate public engagement. The last being Jean’s talk on C.W. Leadbeater, at the 2005 Theosophical History Conference in London.

Jean was hard of hearing which at times made her appear distant. She was a great English eccentric, humorous, kind, highly intelligent with a far ranging culture. She was extraordinary.

Her friends and those who met her will remember her with great warmth and affection. When you met Jean, even though the age gap, there was no sense of an age barrier. She was a rare soul.

LORETTA LAY
– is a Specialist Detective Fiction and True Crime Bookdealer and a leading authority on Jack The Ripper.
www.laybooks.com
*****

MURDER ONE UK
– Murder One UK is an online, mail order only bookseller and a successor to the famous Murder One bookshop that traded in the heart of Charing Cross Road for over twenty years.
www.murderone.co.uk
*****

CASEBOOK
– is the Web’s largest public Jack The Ripper Archive.
www.casebook.org
*****

JACK THE RIPPER FORUMS
– The place to be for all things Ripper.
www.jtrforums.com
*****

RIPPEROLOGIST
– The Journal of Jack The Ripper, East End and Victorian Studies, is available in electronic format on subscription /Email contact@ripperologist.biz
www.ripperologist.com
*****

– Haunted by the failure to catch Londonʼs most evil killer, Jack the Ripper, Inspector Edmund Reid (Matthew Macfadyen) now heads up the notorious H Division – the toughest police district in the East End. Charged with keeping order in the blood-stained streets of Whitechapel, Reid and his men fi nd themselves fi ghting to uphold justice and the rule of law; but always in the background lurks the fear of the Ripper – is he back for another reign of terror.

The shadow of the Ripper is still felt in the neighbourhood by the vigilantes, the sensation-seeking newspaper hacks and the men who hunted – and failed to find – the notorious murderer. It seems that even though the notorious killer has disappeared, there are plenty more willing to stain the streets of Whitechapel with their victims’ blood…